Expires: header

[Julien ÉLIE]

Hi Heiko,

> As we all know, Expires: is not used very often. But not honoring Expires:
> header in nnrpd makes this header less useful. Example: Think about
> announcing a downtime from 09:00 to 11:00 of some service in a newsgroup.
> You could use Expires: so that this article will not presented to readers
> after 11:00.
>
> I would not call it a *real* problem but Expires: could be much more
> powerful if it was not only handled by expire/expireover.

I wonder whether it is something that should be dealt with by a serving agent
or a reading agent.

A reading agent may warn the user when the article he is reading has expired.
Regarding your example, a user may want to know that there has been a downtime
from 09:00 to 11:00...  Why should that information (or any other information)
be hidden?  It could be useful to know it, even after it took place...

I would suggest it is more a matter of reading agents.


Yet, a configurable option could be put in readers.conf so that a serving
agent does not show such articles...  The problem is that it would slow down
HDR and OVER requests because we would have to know (and parse) the Expires:
header of every article, or take it from the history.

-- 
Julien ÉLIE

« Un dictionnaire est comme une montre ; il vaut mieux en avoir un
  que pas du tout, mais le meilleur n'est jamais tout à fait exact. »
  (Georges-Bernard Shaw)